This blog is moving to mkcarroll.com!
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This mkcarroll.typepad.com version of the blog will remain up as an archive for a few more months while I get everything sorted out at mkcarroll.com. Comments and trackbacks here have been closed. All new posts and updates will now be on mkcarroll.com.
...and once I can get the setup straightened out, there will be a new email address as well.
Thanks!
m.k.
Among other changes, it looks like I'm going to be working as a field tech on an outer island next week, which means that even if I had internet access, I'd be too tired to type at the end of the day. My Etsy shop will be in 'vacation' mode (patterns can still be purchased through this blog or through Ravelry), email will be set to 'vacation' mode. Comments have been closed on this blog not only for the duration of my time away, but also in preparation for the move to the new website.
With the help of Amber's 48 Hour Express Blog Setup, I'm planning to set up my own domain with a blog this week. Having witnessed what can happen when doing a move like the one Amber has got planned for me, and gotten her warnings about what can happen, I'll continue to have the blog here at this address for a while longer, and will give plenty of warning before making the final transition.
Now that I'm officially finished with school* this is what my Sunday looked at: several pots of tea and a lot of pattern layout. A photo shoot was planned but didn't work out, mainly because both of my camera batteries went dead after I got only a few test shots set up. Those shots suggested to me that I re-block one of the pieces anyway, so it wasn't a total loss.
City bus ridership has been up for the past several months, which has really been cutting into my knitting/crocheting time, but I've started packing lunches to take to work and that might free me up to do a little knitting or crocheting during my lunch break.
*well, for now. I didn't apply to any grad programs for this year, anyway.
While going through my financial records in preparation for filing taxes, I realized that I had not spent much money on Etsy so far in 2009. I am also in the process of finishing up the formatting of a scarf pattern, and I want to do another sample of the scarf for photography, so I went into my Etsy Favorites and purchased two skeins of craftyyarn's GLAM handspun recycled yarn I've been gazing at wistfully for months now, and a skein of RED - hand-plied recycled yarn (two multi-ply strands of a recycled red
silk/cotton blend, with thinner strands
of a red cashmere).
The GLAM is a super-bulky (6 wpi) self-striping, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it works up in the scarf. The RED is a bulky (10 wpi) and I think it's going to drape beautifully - I had been thinking of using it as an edging but now I think I'm going to use it for another scarf. The yarns arrived quickly, neatly packaged and labeled.
I've been thinking, for years now, about how to make crochet patterns easier for me to present visually. I tend to think in pictures, not words, and turning text into something visual is kind of annoying for me. Symbolcraft charts help, but I still find myself hunched over charts, trying to figure out where I am in the chart and having to flip the image around in my head. Plus there is the matter of space. The publications I'm familiar with that use charts will run a chart, but as an entire motif or piece, not as a line-by-line representation. Space is definitely an issue for books and magazines! It's also an issue for PDF patterns - the size of the file, for starters, and then how users will use the pattern - some will read it off the screen, others will want to print it out, and those who are printing often have concerns about how much ink and paper the pattern will use.
A few years back, I started to acknowledge that my strongest designs are the ones that happen because I want to make something for myself or for a gift. Why has it taken me this long to figure that I can also apply that to how I format the patterns I self-publish? Not everyone will like the format, but that's always true; I can't please everyone - and in this case, I might as well please myself. Even though I have good eyesight, I don't like squinting, so the symbolcraft charts will be relatively large, with line-by-line instructions in at least 14-point font. To acommodate those who do not wish to print out the entire pattern, I am trying out ways to fit the entire written pattern on the final page with the completed chart, so that there's an option to print out just one or two pages. This new format that I'm playing with turned the 2-page (including pattern info [description, yarns, hook sizes, etc.], photos and chart) Anne Crochet Lace Scarf pattern into 4 pages for just the charted instructions.
I couldn't have done this back when I first started thinking about it, really. The phenomenon of Ravelry.com, for starters, has made selling PDF patterns to a larger audience even easier. There are many niches available to designers; I can opt to do PDF-only, which means not having to worry about how much it will cost to print and ship a pattern. Vector Designer, a drawing application for Macs, has meant not having to invest a large sum of money and time into acquiring and learning Adobe Illustrator (which may be fantastic, but much too powerful for my needs, as well as harder for me to learn than Vector Designer). I've also switched from MS Office to iWork, and the iWork Pages application has a layout option that is making pattern formatting a lot easier for me. My school schedule has gotten lighter, so that I can choose to spend more time messing around with the program and thinking about how I want things to look, and the ulnar nerve impingement issues in my right arm have eased up enough so that I can work at the computer without pain.
Two upcoming patterns in the new format have gone through pattern testing (again, I've got Ravelry to thank for the ease of finding and communicating with experienced pattern testers) and the responses have been almost entirely in favor of the new format, with a couple of concerns about the
number of pages. Feedback has included the observation that it's much easier for beginners to understand, even if they aren't familiar with how to read a symbolcraft chart - because the chart is being built as the instructions go on, and is oriented to look like what is in the crocheter's hands at that point, the extra translation step of trying to turn text into an image in your head can be skipped over.
What you see is what you get.
Yesterday, I completed the 4-page symbolcraft chart add-on for the Anne Crochet Lace Scarf pattern. Ravelers, if you purchased the pattern through Ravelry, the new PDF files are included in the pattern library and you should be able to download the update through your personal library page for PDFs. If you purchased through my blog or through Etsy, and you'd like to get the additional charts, email me (carroll[dot]mk[at]gmail[dot]com) and I'll send it to you. I do not plan to offer this as a pre-printed pattern at this time.
I hope that this is going to help make crocheting even more pleasurable for some people; it's giving me a lovely sense of satisfaction as a designer.
"...like fresh-baked bread for your feet" (moth heaven) It's true. I know that may sound really strange (bread? for feet?) but it's such a treat. Until I slipped on a pair of socks made just for me, I didn't really realize just how poorly the machine-made standardized size socks I buy at the store fit.
Opal (the Akamai Knitter) knit me these socks as a "because you’re my friend and you don’t have enough handknit socks and I need to not knit anymore socks for me" present. I've knit socks for other people, and I did have one pair of handknit socks that I got as part of a sock swap a few years back, but they were knit from worsted weight and very thick and heavy, so I rarely used them, and then I lost one of them.
The timing was perfect - it's been getting down into the 50's at night here, and I know many of you are not impressed by that, but wait! When it's 54F outside, it's 54F in my bedroom. The one with the 'industrial-chic' bare concrete floor. A sweatshirt has been added to my usual pj's and I keep slippers by my bed, but what I really wanted was a pair of warm wooly socks. I have lots of cotton socks. They don't keep my feet warm, and they also tend to slip off while I'm sleeping.
On the list of things I accomplished in 2008, one of them was opening a business account. [please note: my waiting this long was a BAD BAD BAD idea, it was one of those things I had procrastinated on, but it should have been the first thing I did after getting my state tax license.] Previously, I had transferred funds from my PayPal account to my regular bank account, keeping track of it in QuickBooks, and noting how much I'd made every month - but most of what I made was getting spent, and not all on the business (like the new tires I bought for the car just a few months before the car died its last death). Around the same time that I opened the business account, I landed another job, and shortly afterwards, gave up on the car. My business account is just inconvenient enough for me so that it takes a couple of extra steps for me to access the funds if it's not for business purposes (for example, there is no online or telephone options for me to check my balance or transfer funds from one account to another), and combined with having less of a need to tap those funds, my business account got to a point where I looked at my November bank statement and thought, gee, what can I do with this? My first thought was to put as much of it as possible into a savings account, where it could sit and build interest. My second thought was about why I immediately thought of putting it into a savings account, and what came to the surface for me was that I was afraid of losing the money.
Now, I've had some times in my life where there was less than $20 in my bank account, and times when the only reason I was eating every day was because I worked for a grocery co-op, and plenty of times when the thought of money would make my hands tighten up into nervous fists. BUT. I had a bank account, I was eating every day, and so on. So a few years ago, I started working on my thinking, and now when I feel my hands start to tighten, I ask myself how much I can afford to give, and then I ask myself if that's really all I can manage. The real wealth is in me (and you, and everyone else). This time, I decided to take another look at Kiva, a micro-lending website that makes it possible for me (and you) to loan funds to people all around the world. I'd looked at Kiva before, but felt really weird about looking at people's business goals and having to pick someone, and got bogged down by questioning what was appealing to me about it, and going around and around in my head. This time, I picked a region, picked a sector, and asked myself how much I was willing to loan. $100? Asked myself again. Looked at the list of entrepreneurs, saw one that was $225 away from the loan requested, and chose that one. It's not a rational or practical way to make a choice, I know, but that's one more small business person out there who now has funding to expand a small business, and eventually, the loan will be repaid and I can either take the money back or loan it out again. As a small business person myself, I know what a big difference that can make. I am aware that financially, the smartest thing for myself was probably my first thought - save it. Keep it. Have it grow for me. Right now, I'm okay with not keeping it all for myself. Ask me again in 30 years?
Shortly after I made the loan, I listened to the Speaking of Faith interview with Binyavanga Wainaina, The Ethics of Aid: One Kenyan's Perspective, and it was quite thought-provoking. You can get that episode as a podcast or listen to it on the website, if you are interested in hearing it.
Recipe: Perfect Vegan Sugar Cookies from the John & Kristie blog; includes recipe for the icing and photos showing how to dip the cookies. I used the edge of the bowl to gently smoosh off some of the excess, and sprinkled the vampires with sparkling sugar while the icing was still wet.
The icing needs to set for several hours before the cookies can be stacked; if you are also in Hawai'i and dealing with those super-annoying tiny ants that can get into just about anything, including Tupperware, and wondering how I managed, I laid them out in the snap-top plastic containers with the rubber lined lids - the ones I have are branded "Xeonic" and "Snapware" and I've purchased them at Don Quijote. It did occur to me this morning that I could have put them on a tray in the fridge for about an hour - I put the leftover icing in the fridge and it got solid very quickly.
You can find edible glitter, sanding sugar, and crystal sugar at Bake It Pretty (bakeitpretty.com), and they also carry cookie cutters (pine tree, "folk" pine tree, and "folk" gingerbread boy). I found cutters at a local grocery store (Star Market). Bake It Pretty will also be selling gel color paste soon. I used Wilton's Leaf Green gel color paste - about 1/2 teaspoon for half a batch of icing. I was worried about how long it might take to get in the mail (because I waited too long: note to self, order all Christmas-related stuff by Dec. 10th), so instead I had to go to three different stores before I found a white sparkling sugar at a specialty store (Executive Chef in Ward Shopping Center). It's the Dean Jacob's Sparkling Sprinkles. The ingredients list for the white sprinkles looks vegan, but the other colors in the container (I had to buy it as a set of 4) contain confectioner's glaze, which can be vegan but sometimes isn't.
If you are not familiar with Twilight, I like Cleolinda Jones' Twilight in 15 Minutes. I reviewed the book as "I have all kinds of problems with the characters, the plot, the writing style...and I could barely put it down. Grrf." Kidlet, she LOVES the books and the movie, and when the idea for Sparkling Vampire Sugar Cookies popped into my head, I knew what I was making for Christmas.
*line taken from the above-mentioned Twilight in 15 Minutes.
